


your sleeping sixth sense will open its eyes

by younglegends



Category: Triple H (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Canon-Typical Violence, Multi, Pining, Polyamory Negotiations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 12:53:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13054410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/younglegends/pseuds/younglegends
Summary: It was just Hwitaek’s luck to have the world end on him in the middle of a heist.





	your sleeping sixth sense will open its eyes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rainingover](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainingover/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide!
> 
> A note: I tried to minimize the depictions of violence as best I could, but this is a zombie apocalypse AU, so proceed with caution! 
> 
> * Warning for canon-typical suicidal ideation.

The day the world ended, Hyojong tried to go with it. There it is, he'd thought, looking down at the destruction from his apartment window—there's the bang you were waiting for. Better do it now, before it dies out into a whimper, and he had eyed his own reflection in the mirror like a dare.

The trick was deciding which way to go. Telephone wire or filled bathtub or up in flames. Or, he thought, upending the plastic bag of old cassette tapes that clattered onto the floor like so much useless change, just any old thing would do. Through the plastic, everything looked as though from the inside of a fishbowl. Colours blurred by watery glass, until nothing looked like anything at all.

He lasted a minute and a half before tearing his way back into the world. The first breath hurt going down. It all felt very unsatisfying, somehow. Too easy. Like he’d had his thunder stolen.

Eyes narrowed, Hyojong watched the explosions in the distance like fireworks, and scratched idly at the angry red lines on his neck.

How annoying—that the end of the world now made living in it more interesting than the alternative.

Better go and see what was left, Hyojong thought, and came down upon the world like a vulture.

 

It was just Hwitaek’s luck to have the world end on him in the middle of a heist. He might’ve pulled it off, too—except now he’d never know, because he’d had to split when one of the clubbers lunged across the bar and bit his mark straight in the neck. Anyone else might have frozen up, maybe, but he’d entered the club with all the exits already mapped out in his mind. The body hadn’t even hit the floor before the doors were swinging shut behind him.

But there were more outside, waiting. It was like he’d come out to the wrong side of the world. Instinct was all that saved him, sending his fist into the jaw of the bouncer waiting for him, the one who’d been smoking a cigarette when Hwitaek had entered and was now frothing at the mouth. The streets were run wild, collapsing in on themselves like a shattered ribcage, and Hwitaek took his cue to do what he did best and disappear. Heart thudding in his chest to the only beat he’d ever known: one step after another, carrying him on through the alleyways, ever forward. Steal to survive, and cheat when you can’t, and lie when you get caught, and run when there’s nowhere else to go. Anything to live another day, and none of it had failed Hwitaek yet, if he was still running.

But he couldn’t run forever like this on his own two feet. There were abandoned cars littered all over the streets, engines idling. Hwitaek could imagine the scene—drivers stopping to see what was going on, seeing blood and bodies, rushing over to try and help. Leaving their doors open, their unattended children still seatbelted in the back. Hwitaek averted his eyes from the windows until he came across an empty car and crept inside. Closed the door and, finally, breathed out.

Somewhere in the distance came the sound of an explosion, and then a cacophony of car alarms wailing through the night. Hwitaek clenched his bruised knuckles around the steering wheel and set his sights forward. Turned the keys in the ignition and started to drive.

Run, he remembered, run like a rabbit back to its hole, and then the girl appeared before him like a ghost.

 

Hyuna’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking. She could tell it was bothering the man in the driver’s seat. He kept flicking wary glances at her when he thought she couldn’t see. She wondered if it was the blood, or if it was in case the shaking was a side effect of being bitten. Probably the blood, she decided, and made no move to wipe it off.

On the radio, frantic voices announced between bursts of static that there were quarantine spaces being set up all over the city, that it was imperative for all survivors to come find shelter immediately. For your own safety, they said, and also for the world’s, and the man beside her reached out and turned off the radio. He looked her in the eye then, waiting, and she stared back. Said nothing at all.

She’d been mopping the floors when the customer had entered. It had been a slow day, summer heat wilting the flowers on the sill, so she’d closed all the curtains. When he laid his palm on her bare thigh there was no one to see, no point in screaming. All she had was the razor blade in her hand. It was easier than she would have expected. She had stared down at the blood blooming across the tiles and thought, numbly, that there would be no cleaning this up. This was the end.

Then she had walked out, ready to face the fallout, only to discover that the end had not been hers. Maybe this was why, Hyuna had thought, watching strangers tear each other apart in the streets, but deep down she knew there had been no sign of a bite on him. Nothing but a fully human heart bleeding itself out on the ground. There would be no pretending that the monster had been anything but a man.

He had to be miles away, now, left behind in the ruin. But her ears were ringing, a little, from the silence. Still waiting for the quake that had never come.

Something landed in her lap. She blinked down at a handkerchief. The man shrugged at her.

Slowly, Hyuna wiped the blood from her hands. It had seeped into the lines of her palm, but she scrubbed until only her fingernails remained red. Then she balled up the handkerchief, rolled down the window, and threw it out.

She’d cleaned up what she could. All the rest of it was behind her, now.

The man cleared his throat. “My name is Hui,” he said.

Hyuna stared at him, not giving an inch. “That’s a really weird name,” she said.

He grimaced. Silence for a few more moments. She could practically see his thoughts flickering across his eyes like the shuffle of a card deck: pick a card and see if you end up lucky. Then, finally, against all odds: “Hwitaek. It’s Hwitaek.”

He looked at her then, something a little desperate about it, but he should’ve known they had always been on equal ground—since they had met eyes through the windshield in recognition, since the radio had called them home and they had stayed moving in the opposite direction. Hyuna would never have settled for anything less.

“Hyuna,” she said. Her hands had stopped shaking.

Hwitaek nodded, stiff in relief. Then returned his gaze back to the road just in time to crash into the man stepping off the sidewalk, his face turned up to the sky as though ready for flight.

 

“Shit,” Hwitaek said. Tongue stinging from where he’d bitten straight down on it. “Was that a—?”

“He’s not moving,” Hyuna said, eyes wide, except then he _was:_ dragging himself up from the asphalt, body crooked in all the wrong ways, as though rising from the dead. It had to be one of them, Hwitaek was thinking, one of the turned, but then the man was straightening up, _laughing._ Eyes perfectly clear in the glare of the headlights.

“You’re kidding me,” Hwitaek said, and then he was slamming the door shut behind him before his brain could finally catch up to his body. He grabbed him by the shirt collar, reared back and punched the guy straight in the face.

“What is wrong with you,” Hwitaek was saying, “are you stupid, are you _crazy—_ ”

A hand, on his arm. Hwitaek stilled. Hyuna was staring down at him, wide-eyed, the copper of her hair set aflame by the streetlights. Any other day and Hwitaek still would’ve had it in him to continue—the leftover momentum of the fight or flight response that’d kicked in from the shock of the crash, the fox winning out over the rabbit—but he’d already thrown a punch that day. His knuckles were beginning to sting. There was blood on the cuffs of his blue silk shirt, the one he’d stolen from a department store, everything in his pockets belonging to someone else, and all of it had gone so, so wrong—

“Do you even know what’s happened,” Hwitaek said. “There are people _dying_ out there.”

The guy blinked up at him from where Hwitaek had his shirt collar clenched in his fist. Mouth bloodied a brilliant red. “It’s the end of the world,” he said, and then he started laughing again, teeth flashing white in the dark.

Hwitaek let go of his shirt. The guy stumbled back to his feet, still laughing. Beside him, Hyuna’s eyes were still wide, but not with fear. There had never been fear, Hwitaek was just beginning to realize. Only a curiosity that looked a lot less careful than he liked.

Hwitaek stared at them, a little incredulously, a little helplessly. There was nothing else to be done.

Later, settled in the backseat of the car, the guy leaned forward into the space between Hwitaek and Hyuna and said, “I’m hungry.”

Hyuna rummaged through the side compartment on her car door. “There’s a couple of mints here,” she said, and tossed one to him in the back.

Across the city, buildings were burning. Hwitaek gritted his teeth, and drove on towards the blaze.

 

For all his talk about staying on guard against biters, Hwitaek had been the first one to pass out that night. They’d found an abandoned motel on the far outskirts of the city and broken into one of the rooms. Hyuna had disappeared into the bathroom to take a ridiculously long shower, Hyojong had gone outside with a cigarette, and when he’d come back Hwitaek was out like a light on the bed overtop the still-tucked bedsheets. He hadn’t even taken off his ugly loafers. Hyojong had a moment to wonder how on earth he’d even made it this far. Beside him, Hyuna was curled up in a chair, hair wet and eyes glinting catlike in the night straight at Hyojong, as though daring him to wake Hwitaek up.

Hyojong stared back. Shrugged.

This seemed to appease her, and she looked away, through the crack in the window blinds at the night outside. Hyojong peered out, too, to see what she was looking at, but there was nothing there for miles. There was a TV in the room, but no electricity. That meant no air conditioning, either. The mirror in the bathroom was broken, and there was a spider spinning a web in the corner behind the toilet. Hyojong watched it for a while.

Then he got bored.

So it wasn’t his fault, really, that Hwitaek woke up to find all the contents of his pockets arranged around him on the bed like the chalk outline of a corpse. A black leather wallet, a metro card, three fake IDs, two credit cards, a switchblade, and 68,755 won in assorted bills and coins.

“What the hell is this?” Hwitaek spluttered. His hair was sticking up in every direction and his eyes were wild. A cornered animal. “Why the fuck did you go through my things?”

Hyojong eyed the frantic way he scrambled to shove everything back into his pockets, considering most of them were now meaningless. Only a knife was always worth its weight. “For someone so intent on surviving, you’re not very good at it.”

“I’m gonna kill you,” Hwitaek said. Digging every last hundred-won coin out from the bedsheets.

“I’m counting on it,” Hyojong said, and smiled.

That was when Hyuna emerged from the bathroom, door banging open against the wall. “There’s a spider in the tub,” she said. Then: “What’s going on?”

“He’s fucking _crazy,_ that’s what’s going on,” Hwitaek said, jabbing his finger at Hyojong.

Hyuna’s gaze slid over to Hyojong. Then right off again, like he was harmless. “You’re the one who picked him up,” she said.

“Yeah,” Hyojong said. “Isn’t that right, Kim Dongchan?”

Hwitaek stiffened. Eyes darting to the door like a rabbit ready to bolt. Hyojong was struck by the faint disappointment that it had been this easy, to rile him up. Simply pulling the string on a wind-up toy and letting go.

“Or is it Min Sungwoo,” Hyojong said, counting them off on his fingers as though naming items for a grocery list. “Or Park Kyunghwan?” He cocked his head. “It’s funny—none of your IDs gave the name Hwitaek. Where’d you pull that one from?”

“It’s none of your business,” said the man sitting on the bed. Eyes shuttered, even when he’d already given everything up. There was nothing left of him that interested Hyojong, and he turned away, to meet Hyuna’s eyes in the bathroom doorway. She was still standing there, watching them. Looking like she was waiting for something.

“Is there anything real about you,” Hyojong said, more as an afterthought than anything, and for some reason that was what did it.

“It’s my name,” Hwitaek burst out, a sour look on his face. “It’s my real name. I gave you my real name, okay? Why does it even still matter?”

Hyojong stared at him. “Why would you do that?”

“What?”

“Give your real name when you have three in your back pocket,” Hyojong said, speaking slowly as though it would help Hwitaek understand better.

“He didn’t, at first,” Hyuna cut in. “Tried to sell me on _Hui._ Can you believe it?”

“Christ,” said Hwitaek. “What is this, an interrogation? Where’s the good cop?”

“So you’re a criminal, obviously,” Hyojong said, eyeing him up and down. “What is it? Murderer? Arsonist? Gang leader?”

Hyuna cracked a smile. “Hit-and-run,” she said.

“Hey,” Hwitaek said, “I didn’t run,” and then he paused, as though registering what he’d just said. “I didn’t run.”

“Why,” Hyojong said. “Are you going to?”

Hwitaek stared back at him. It was funny, because Hyojong’d been the one run over like roadkill, but here Hwitaek was, looking caught out by headlights. He wondered what it would take, for the fight to return to Hwitaek’s eyes. Where, exactly, the man who’d hauled Hyojong up by the collar and punched him straight in the face had disappeared off to. He could still smell his own dried blood rotting on the blue silk of his shirt.

“He can’t run if we’re dragging him down,” Hyuna said, and then, leveling her stare at Hwitaek, “Are you not going to shower? Because you’ve got drool on your chin.”

“Christ,” Hwitaek said again, rubbing his hand over his face. “Did you two not _sleep?_ ”

“You took the bed,” Hyojong reminded him.

Hwitaek glared at him on his way to the bathroom. There it was, Hyojong thought, the fox, and across the room, Hyuna looked smug as a cat that had got the cream.

 

They never talked about where they were going. That would be impossible, after all, considering none of them knew. Instead Hwitaek pressed wordlessly on down the highway, taking every city exit he saw, but it was as though the world had passed them by in the night and left nothing behind but abandoned buildings and the stench of blood in the air. They took the opportunity to stock up on all the food they could find, bags of fruit and chips and instant noodles. The first chance Hyuna got, she disappeared into a changing room with an armful of clothes raided from the rack and left her bloodstained shirt and shorts discarded on the floor. “How do I look,” she said, striking a pose when she emerged. 

Hyojong nodded at the print of her shirt. “Like a leopard.”

He’d found himself an ugly hat, but he seemed to make it work somehow. Hwitaek, on the other hand, had expensive tastes, going straight for the luxurious silk shirts and leather jackets. Hyuna herself had an eye for jewelry. Anything that caught the light. The price tags itched against the back of her neck, and she used Hwitaek’s knife to cut them off.

Hwitaek had a funny habit of breaking open cash registers and collecting the money. He seemed convinced that it would all still be worth something one day. That the world would return to them. In the meantime Hyuna and Hyojong raided the powerless refrigerators for bottles of soju going lukewarm in the summer heat and danced on tabletops like queen and king. Hyojong sometimes got this blissed out smile on his face, and it was a complete one eighty from the way he watched biters approach him with mild interest, as though sighting a wild animal in the distance. Hwitaek would take them down with a club, a cleaver, whatever weapon from the arsenal he was building up in the trunk of their car, and then get up in Hyojong’s face after, livid. “What is _wrong_ with you,” he kept saying. A spray of blood across the scar on the bridge of his nose.

“All the same questions,” Hyojong said, bored, and reached out to wipe it off with his finger.  

Hyuna, on the other hand, could hold her own, but her hands shook afterward, and both of them would pretend not to notice. Hyojong’d offered her his cigarette once, though. She took it wordlessly and breathed smoke back into his face, and watched the crooked tilt of his smile, up up up. Hwitaek was watching them from where he was refilling the gas tank. He kept his distance.

She missed music. Her flowers on the sill. But she loved the road, the ever-yawning stretch of it, so much left to go. She’d never left her hometown before, her own corner of the world, and now it seemed the rest of it was opening itself up just for her. Every day the summer heat only grew thicker, but when she rolled down the window and let in the wind to stream through her hair, she almost felt serene.

Her whole life she’d been alone. How strange to find that she wasn’t, anymore, when everything else was gone. The shock of it seized her sometimes, just waking up to see Hwitaek’s profile outlined by the setting sun as he drove, eyes a million miles away, trained ever forward, and then catching Hyojong’s gaze in the rearview mirror. Or closing her eyes to the sound of Hwitaek tapping his fingers against the steering wheel to a beat the rest of them couldn’t hear, Hyojong humming a tune in the back with his feet propped up in between their seats. She was never alone. Not anymore.

It was a moment like that she found herself in one day, sitting at a counter by the smashed windows of a restaurant as Hwitaek busied himself looting the back when Hyojong took the seat next to her, taking a swig from a bottle of Coca-Cola. She turned to face him, the soft glow of his pale hair, the easy return of his low-lidded stare, and was struck by the dizziness of an urgent joy, one that needed to be actualized into motion. She leaned forward, kissed the soda off his lips.

Hyojong held himself perfectly still, mouth softer than she’d have believed it capable of. It all lasted only a second, but when Hyuna pulled back, the world was right side up once more.

“Biters in the back,” Hwitaek said, voice tight. She hadn’t heard him approach. He was dragging them off their seats, a terse line in his brow. Hyuna stumbled over her own feet in the sudden return of vertigo and couldn’t quite catch her breath over the laughter bubbling out as they ran on, forward, free.

Later that night in the old apartment they’d broken into, Hyuna cornered Hyojong in the bathroom. He was lying clothed in the empty bathtub, fiddling with his lighter, and flicked his eyes up at her in interest when she entered. Spider in the tub, Hyuna remembered, and reached out to hold his face in her hand. Her fingers on his chin, tracing the line of his cheek. Tender.

Hyojong’s eyes were dark as he opened his legs, let her clamber on top of him in the cramped space of the tub. Hand sliding around and settling in the small of her back. Then he paused, and Hyuna followed his gaze to Hwitaek, frozen in the crack of the bathroom door. The slow swallow of his throat in hunger.

Hyojong flicked his lighter back on. The flame was a small thing, hidden in between their bodies, charged by the electric weight of Hwitaek’s stare. Hyuna’s hair fell all around it like a curtain, dangerously close. She leaned forward, careful to arch her body over that small protective flame, and met Hyojong’s mouth with hers in delicate balance.

The crooked fit of their bodies knocked against the sides of the tub, everywhere they touched stinging like a bruise. The bony jut of his wrists. The strain of her neck, bent over him. The flame still lit, the flickering warmth of it like a pulsing heart between them.

When they looked back at the door, Hwitaek was gone.

Hyuna drew out a sigh. Hyojong watched the shape of it on her lips, and flipped his lighter shut. She could still feel the phantom heat of it, burning on.

“He ran,” Hyojong said. Mouth swollen red. He reached up to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear.

“We spooked him off,” Hyuna said. “Silly rabbit.” She caught Hyojong’s arm. Dragged him up from the tub, nails digging into his skin.

Hwitaek was on the bed, pretending to be asleep. Still fully clothed. Hyuna yawned, stretched her arms above her head, and stripped down to her underwear. Shoved her way under the covers, knocking into a startled Hwitaek, and left enough space for Hyojong on the other end.

When she woke up it was to find the two of them curled up on either side of her. She’d shifted onto her front somehow, face buried in the pillows. They were both already awake, and watching each other in stillness. Their eyes flicked to her when she lifted her head to look at them. The sun coming in through the windows, setting them all in gold.

“Good morning,” she said, and smiled.

Their hands on her back, almost touching.

 

Sometimes Hwitaek could almost forget the wreck the world was in. When he was just waking up, or on the verge of sleep, or driving down the highway watching Hyuna in the shotgun seat peeling oranges before they could rot in the summer heat and feeding slices to Hyojong, the obscene sprawl of his body across the backseats, neck craned forward and mouth open, waiting for more. Juice dripping down Hyuna’s fingers, the line of her wrist, and she ducked her head down to lick it off, laughing.

“Say ahh,” Hyuna said when she noticed Hwitaek watching, and stuffed a slice into his mouth before he could protest. It tasted sweet. He turned away from them and stared back at the road, sun burning spots into his vision.

And then he’d drive past a city burned down to the ground or through barren streets like bones and realize with horrifying clarity: not that the world was gone, but that he had ever forgotten in the first place, for however brief. So he kept his head down and picked through the debris of what was left for anything, everything he could salvage. It was all his instincts would let him do. He couldn't even pass a coin on the sidewalk without bending over to pick it up. The trunk of their car was filling up with bills. Whenever Hyojong saw that pile, though, he would flick his lighter open and nod at him suggestively, as though all the cash that would have made Hwitaek the richest man in the world was only so much loose kindling.

Hyojong and Hyuna, after all, had their own ways of dealing with the end of the world. Hyuna sometimes would look out at the empty stretch of the road when she was sober, oddly quiet, and Hyojong peered at everything around him in distant fascination as though seeing it all for the first time, but otherwise the two of them only had eyes for each other. Even now, as they whooped and danced around the run-down bar they’d dragged Hwitaek into, clinking dusty bottles they’d dug out from behind the counter and spilling alcohol all over the broken glass on the floor in between swigs.

Hwitaek hunched down over the bottle they’d given him, frowning at them from his table. “C’mon,” they’d told him, “just have a drink,” and he was the driver, but what did it matter, now, anyways? So he’d had a drink, and then another, and now in the intermittent sun filtering through the curtains the two of them seemed to exist only in flashes, shouts and laughter, movement and light. The glint of Hyuna’s earrings, the sheen of sweat on Hyojong’s bared throat. The blur of Hyuna’s red hair coming undone. The line of Hyojong’s feathered lashes when he closed his eyes. Hwitaek squinted harder, tried not to blink, tried to see it all. Because what was a thief good for but stealing things that weren’t his own?

Hyuna was beckoning him, Hyojong tilting his head sideways to watch. The cruel turn of his mouth. Hwitaek’s legs were numb in his chair. He didn’t want to run, not now, not anymore. His heart hungered something terrible. He was, his own slurred mind could still recognize, on the verge of some awfully dangerous decision.

Then a clatter came from the doors, and when Hwitaek looked up, it was to see a group of biters lurching their way inside, mouths gaping open to reveal rows and rows of rotted teeth.

By the time Hwitaek had even fully registered what was happening, his instincts had already kicked in, springing him out of his seat and flipping the table towards them. When he turned back to Hyuna and Hyojong it was with every alarm ringing in his ears, alcohol still slick in his mouth, making him clumsy. “Go,” he heard himself saying, crossing the room in three short strides and shoving them forward. “The windows—out the windows, go—”

There was a corpse in front of him, lunging forward. He scrambled backward, hands grabbing for anything he could use, and smashed a bottle into its head. The bottle exploded in a spray of alcohol and glass shards, and Hwitaek lifted his arms to shield himself from the splinters, but the biter just leered, kept coming. He couldn’t see Hyuna or Hyojong, and that had to mean that they’d made it out safely, but the biters were blocking him from the window now, caging him in. He’d left his weapons in the car, all of it useless now, the money and the silk shirts and the fruit spoiling in the devastation of summer, nothing left to him but his own two hands, the sting of blood in his mouth—

A crack, and the biter went down, leaving Hwitaek to stare dumbly at Hyuna standing behind it, the club he’d left in his car seat firmly clenched in her hands. Beyond her were more biters, but also, standing there like an apparition against the sunset glow coming through the window, Hyojong with his lighter held up against the edge of the fluttering curtains.

“Better run,” he said, and then the hiss of catching flame.

In the confusion of smoke and Hyuna throwing bottle after bottle into the fire Hwitaek could barely fumble his way forward. The biters were howling, clutching at him, but he grabbed hold of Hyuna’s arm, Hyojong’s hand, and set his sights on chasing down the crack of light outside. When they broke through to clear air he felt like he’d come back from the depths of hell itself. Hyuna laughing, Hyojong’s nails digging into his palm, all of them running. The skin of Hwitaek’s back singed from what they’d left in their wake.

There was a mad scramble for the car, but before Hwitaek could get his foot down on the pedal, a hand closed over his wrist. Hyojong, staring intently at him from the backseat.

“Why didn’t you come out with us,” he said, and Hwitaek blinked back at him in bleary surprise.

“Why did you come _back,_ ” he said without thinking, and saw the moment something behind Hyojong’s eyes flickered dead shut, which meant—which meant it had been _open_ all this time—

“For someone so intent on surviving,” Hyojong said slowly, “you’re not very good at it.” But this time it sounded different. Like exasperation.

There were biters stumbling out of the burning bar. They had to leave, _now._ “It’s gotten me this far,” Hwitaek said, something about it sounding desperate even to himself.

“No,” Hyuna said from beside him, voice hard. “We have.”

Hwitaek stared back at her, at them, wild-eyed. “What?”

“Look,” Hyuna said, and Hwitaek looked outside, at the building burning itself down before them like a funeral pyre. This mark upon the world they’d made. The breath caught in his throat. All his years twisting himself stronger, faster to wring what he could from this world. The rabbit running away from the fox. But maybe he’d gone on too long to run from it now. What he’d become.

Hyojong’s grip tightened on his wrist. “We go on together,” he said, perfectly steady, and where was the ghost who’d walked in front of his car, looked death in the face with boredom? The intensity in his eyes scared Hwitaek, a little, because he’d never seen it before. Not for him.  

“Or not at all,” finished Hyuna. There was soot in her hair, on her face. Without thinking Hwitaek reached out to brush it from her cheek. The touch of it burned his fingers. She smiled up at him. Maybe it was the shock of adrenaline, the alcohol still in his system making him stupid, but the road ahead had never looked clearer than through the smoke of the fire. 

“Or not at all,” Hwitaek repeated, a little dizzy with the weight of it, and slammed his foot down on the accelerator, forward. Hands curling around the steering wheel like the grip of claws at last, and never letting go.

 

Hyojong sat on the closed trunk of the car with his legs dangling down. Pulled out a cigarette with one hand and opened his lighter with the other. Breathed in the smoke and let it sink all the way down.

Hyuna nudged for him to move over, hopped up to sit next to him. “Can I have a go,” she said, but when Hyojong offered the cigarette she leaned forward instead, sealed her mouth over his. His lips tingled, numb, from the burn of it.

“That shit will kill you, you know,” Hwitaek said, from where he was filling up the gas tank. Hyojong drew away, took another long drag of his cigarette, and smirked at him. The skin of Hwitaek’s cheeks and nose was flushed with the early signs of sunburn, pinking under the heat.

“Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it,” Hyuna said, and she stole another mouthful of smoke from Hyojong, only to hook Hwitaek in by the collar of his shirt and pass it on to him. Hwitaek wrinkled his nose, but he didn’t pull away. When they came apart, Hwitaek’s lip was bleeding from where Hyuna’d bitten down on it. He met Hyojong’s eye as he licked it away, held his gaze like a promise.

“Look,” Hyuna said, pointing up. A pair of birds circling overhead like vultures. The first signs of life they’d seen in weeks. They watched them for a while in reverent silence, before they flew away, down the road. Ever onward and waiting for them to follow.

“Better go see what’s left,” Hyojong said. Stamped the cigarette out under his foot and joined the others in returning to their seats, and the car doors slammed shut behind them with a bang.

 


End file.
